A smart city is really about the application of data, the acquisition of data and how do we apply the data analytics to make better decisions. For me and the way I look at how we gauge smart cities, it’s about making better decisions with better data. In many cases, automating decisions that can be automated frees us up to …

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Working-Class Perspectives, Georgetown, DC Public transit infrastructure in Washington, D.C. is crumbling. Metro and bus services have been cut. Fares have gone up. And, safety remains a problem. After 40 years of deferred maintenance, poor management, and the lack of decent, long-term funding, the Metro system needs $1.4 billion worth of repairs, and it must close …

ZDNet 6 Feb 2018 The use of cloud computing services and applications continues to increase at a rapid rate, leading to the rise of vast ‘hyperscale’ cloud data centers. Both consumer and business applications are contributing to the growing dominance of cloud services. For consumers, streaming video, social networking, and search are among the most popular cloud applications; for business users, enterprise …

New Yorker, 12 Feb 2018 Big events go by unseen while we sweat the smaller stuff; things happen underground while we watch the boulevard parades. Truly underground, sometimes: in 1858, the pundits and politicians in Britain were obsessing over the British government’s takeover of India from the East India Company and the intentions of Napoleon III, yet the really big …

Smart City Dive, 31 Jan 2018 Uber announced a new long-term partnership with the City of Cincinnati, dubbed the Cincinnati Mobility Lab, to study the impacts of shared mobility on public transit and make the city a “center of innovation.” The multi-year commitment will include: addressing the growing demand for curb space; rolling out Uber Movement to leverage city data for research and analysis; launching …

By David Zipper, CityLab, 7 Jan 2018How, exactly, should policymakers respond to the rapid rise of new private mobility services such as ride-hailing, dockless shared bicycles, and microtransit? As I argued here several months ago, in order to answer that question city leaders will need accurate and detailed information about all urban trips—however the traveler chose to get from one place to …

Open science in its broadest sense refers to efforts to make the scientific process more open and inclusive to all relevant actors, within and beyond the scientific community, as enabled by digitalisation (OECD, forthcoming b). It is not only about open access to publication or open data, but is also about access to research infrastructures and related information. This case …

BY EILLIE ANZILOTTI Fast Company 01.10.18 Imagining The Adaptable, Sensor-Filled Street Of The Future To get there, we need technologists to think more like urban planners, and for urban planners to think more like technologists–and for the two sectors to work together. Conversations about our future cities and streets hinge around smart, interconnected technologies: Think sensors that monitor the progress of autonomous vehicles, stoplights that …

Excerpt from Smart City Dive, Jan 2018 by Krisin Muselin “It is fair to consider whether the futuristic visions of hyper-connectivity and advanced livability, enabled by accessibility to vast streams of data, can withstand the very real concerns that municipalities cannot afford the technologies behind smart city projects,” wrote Fred Ellermeier, vice president and managing director of Connected Communities for …

Cities are now looking at both the internet and data as basic forms of infrastructure. For example, San Francisco city leaders recently announced the kickoff of a $2 million study to build municipal broadband, which carries a potential price tag of $1.5 billion. Another leading city, Chattanooga, TN, is paving the way as a city offering a similar service, which …